Family genealogy
My "Czalczynski" families found
An unexpected reunion
What was great during my investigation was the messages in bottles that led to unexpected discoveries.
Each time, I thought of my father, who believed the Czalczynskis had all perished in the turmoil. He, who admired simple transistors, would have been amazed by this technology that allows for unpredictable reunions and for staying in touch across the globe.
An active approach
When I started my research, I focused on Jewish genealogy websites: Jewish Gen and its subsidiary JRI-Poland.
I found a large part of the Czalczynski family in the records of the Kielce region where our family originated.
While many Jewish symbols such as cemeteries or synagogues were destroyed during the Holocaust, it would appear that local archives suffered less than in Warsaw or other major Polish cities.
At the same time, I had registered on other sites such as Ancestry, My Heritage and Geni.
By leaving messages and posting my initial research online, other users from around the world were able to access it. We were able to correspond, exchange ideas, and enrich our mutual knowledge.
Of course, there are still some gray areas, particularly regarding the actual lives of our ancestors in Poland.
But let us remain hopeful for progress in historical research.
I- On the trail
by Maria Czalczynski,
a great-aunt
My great-grandfather, Berek Czalczynski, had 5 brothers and sisters, including Maria. They all lived around Lopuszno.
One died young and the descendants of two others (Fajgla and Malka) perished entirely in the Holocaust.
Some descendants of Maria and Ruchla still live in the USA and Argentina, others in Sweden and Israel.
I am attempting here to reconstruct our shared genealogy.
Maria's descendants
Marya Czalczynski married Uryn-Aron Czerchowski in Malogoszcz in 1864.
They had ten children: That is, ten children in 22 years.
1- Rajzla-Fajgla (1865) was born in Olszowka. We know nothing of her life. She likely perished before or at the beginning of the Holocaust.
2- Gitla (1866), also born in Olszowka, married Szlama Kanatkowicz. We know nothing of their lives. They died before or at the beginning of the Holocaust.
3- Yitzack (1867), born near Lopuszno
The only branch with a survivor from those who remained in Poland was that of Yitzack .
He married Gitla Konatkowicz (1873).
Their daughter Sara Czerchowski married Nuchem Wilczkowski. She died at Auschwitz.
They had a son Jacob-Aro who married Hela Krakow and lived in Lodz .
They survived the Lodz Ghetto and were among those sent to a camp and liberated by the "white buses" of the Swedish Red Cross.
They settled in Uppsala, Sweden , and had a son , Simon Wilczkowski. We started exchanging information.
4- Malka (1870-?) Czerchowski married Majer Seyslowski in 1912. No further information.
5- Bayla (1872) was born in Olszowka. She married Herszle Rajzman. We have no knowledge of their story. They almost certainly perished with their family in the Holocaust.
6- Szmul (1875-1949 in Chicago)
It's Mark's family who live in Chicago
He left Poland in 1905 and took the first and last name Max Maslov in the USA.
He married Esther Gerszonowicz (1878-1954), a daughter of Ruchla Czalczynski. They had 6 children.
* Jacob/Harry Czerchowski/Maslov was born in Kielce in 1900 and died in Florida in 1990. He married Ruth Perlberg, born in 1903 in Zolynia (Poland) and died in 1994 in Florida.
* Samuel Czerchowski/Maslov was born in Kielce and died in Chicago in 1940. He married Mary Rosenberg, born in New York in 1906 and died in Chicago in 1998.
* Kisriel/Isidore Czerchowski/Maslov born in 1904 in Poland and died in 1914 in the USA.
* Sara Maslov, born in 1908 in Chicago and died in 1974, married Albert Zarit (1904-1974).
* Bluma/Florence Maslowsky (intermediate name taken by the family before shortening it to Maslov) born in March 1912 in Chicago and died 3 weeks later.
* Abraham/Irving Maslov, born in 1918 in Chicago and died in 2015. He was married to Louise Lubinsky (1922-1987).
The family of Szmul Czerchowski/Maslov, seated on the right and his wife on the left, Ester Gerszonowicz (the daughter of Ruchla Czalczynski)
Between them, their youngest son, Irving/Abraham.
Standing from left to right: Samuel, Harry/Jacob (Mark's grandfather) and Sarah/Sue.
7- Izrael (1878-1954 in Buenos Aires ). He left for Argentina in 1905, changing his surname to Cherjovsky. He married Mindla Szklo (1874-1948) and settled in Buenos Aires. They had three children.
* Rosa (1897-1920),
* Sara (1898-1920) and
* Herschel/Enrique/José Cherjovsky (?-1978) in Buenos Aires married Aida-Rosa Wainberg (?-1974 in Buenos Aires)
8- Rojza/Rosa Czerchowska (1884-1968 in Buenos Aires ) was born in Olszowka. She married Berl Ejchenbaum (?-1950). They changed their name in Argentina to Aijenbom. They had 5 children.
* Jacob/Jacobo Angel Aijenboom (1909-1993). He married Dora Faerman and they lived in Buenos Aires.
*Aron Aijenbom (1915 in Buenos Aires - 1993 in Jerusalem) married Braine-Jaite Zarembski (?- 2014 in Jerusalem).
* Margarita Aijenbom (1918 Buenos Aires- 2000 Buenos Aires) married Samuel Rubin.
Sara Aijenbom married Jacobo Gleyzer.
*Leonardo Aijenbom married Clara?
* Lata Aijenbom married Moisesz Resels (?- 1964 in Buenos Aires)
9- Sara Czerchowski (1885-1968 in Buenos Aires ) married Leon Raizman (no information). They had 3 children and settled in Buenos Aires.
* Jaime Moisez Raizman (1906-1975 in Buenos Aires).
* Jacobo Rauzman (1908-1968 in Buenos Aires).
* Margarita Raizman (1918 in Buenos Aires - 2013 in Buenos Aires) married Benjamin Berelsonas (?- 1990, in Buenos Aires)
10- Isaac-Eisig Czerchowski (1887 in Kielce-1960 in Los Angeles ) married Esther, born around 1886. They had 4 children and had to emigrate to the USA around 1915.
* Josef Czerchowski/Maslov (1911 in Kielce - 2009 USA) married Betty? No other information.
* Celia Czerchowski/Maslov (1913 in Kielce- 2010, USA) married Henry Rothschild (no information).
*Rose Maslov (1917 in Chicago-2011 Los Angeles). She married Ralph Lazarus Sampson (1916-2005).
* Morton Maslov (1924 Chicago- 2014). He married Eléomor (no surname).
Half of Maria's children left Poland between 1905 and 1920 for the USA or Argentina!
Mark Maslov and his father Alvin (Abraham) contacted me.
Alvin's parents were Jacob/Harry Czerchowski/Maslov and Ruth Perlberg, and it was his grandfather Szmul/Max Czerchowski who made the decision to emigrate.
In the USA, after 18 months, Samuel/Max decided to simplify his name to Maslowski, the surname of one of his brothers-in-law. Then, in 1915, he definitively shortened his name to Maslov.
In Argentina, they decided to Hispanicize their name, keeping it close to the original one.
Mark abd Alvin send me the Max's story in USA
To avoid conscription in the Russian army at the Russian – Japan war (1904-1905), Max and his brother, Izrael, decided to leave Poland.
Max chose to immigrate to the USA, while Max’s brother decided to immigrate to Argentina.
Max settled in New York City in 1905 and worked in the garment making industry having learned to tailor clothing in Poland.
Relocating to Chicago
By the middle of 1906, Max found his way to Chicago and brought his wife, Esther, and their children to Chicago.
No one knows why Max moved from New York to Chicago.
In Chicago, Max began to accumulate real estate holdings. He owned apartment buildings on the south side of the city, which was rapidly industrializing with steel, oil, and chemical companies establishing factories. The need for housing was acute.
During the first two decades of the 20th century, Max and his family were prosperous.
Prior to establishing his real estate business, according Alvin, Max worked at Hart Schaffner & Marx, which was perhaps the largest producer of clothing in Chicago at that time.
Harry, the oldest son, took on a vital role in the management of the properties. He pursued a business education at the college level while undertaking all aspects of the management of rental properties’ income, maintenance, insurance, etc.
When the economic depression commenced in the 1930s, banks foreclosed on property, and the Maslovs lost most of their sources of income and wealth. They had to pursue work wherever it could be found.
For example, Max returned to the tailoring and clothes cleaning business, although he was able to maintain ownership of some of the rental properties.
Meanwhile, Harry, the oldest son, married Ruth Perlberg and established a retail grocery business, sold insurance and provided public accounting services. Harry took an active role in supporting other members of the family who immigrated during the preceding decades. For instance, Harry’s brother Sam died young. Sam left a widow and two young children, and Harry and Ruth helped support them and raise the children.
World War 2
Harry stayed in contact via the mails with relatives living in Poland in the early 1940s and occasionally sent money to them.
As time passed, communications ceased with those relatives in Poland. There were relatives, however, who immigrated to Israel in the 1930s, settling in Haifa. One such relative was an electrical engineer who worked on electrical distribution facilities located in the Negev desert. Again contact was intermittent at best and ceased.
Harry was in regular contact with Rachel Flatto and the Bilu family until the 1980s. Originally, it was Max who kept in touch with everyone in Europe. Of Max’s children, only Harry was old enough to have memories of Europe and could read and write Yiddish, and Harry worked closely with Max in his business. So naturally, the task fell to Harry to continue correspondence with the extended family.
Harry was actively involved in the Zionist organizations in the USA during and after the war. However no contacts with relatives resulted from this effort.
Post World War 2
I am not aware of any communication between the Maslovs and our European family after the war.
With the advent of genealogical research and DNA matching, contacts with Mark Maslov and Freya Blitstein, wife of Seymour (Harry’s elder son), have been found.
Gradually other members of the family joined them.
The descendants of Ruchla
Ruchla Czalczynski married Abram Gerszonowicz .
One son is listed on Jewish-Gen: Leyb-Arié Léon Gerzonowicz ( 1878-1942) married Bajla-Etla Garnek in 1906 and had 4 children: Avraham , Moscek, Ruchla and Sarah.
Two of these children left for Palestine, but I don't know in which year.
Abraham Gerzonowicz became Abraham Bilu and Ruchla got married and became Rula Flatto.
Abraham Bilu developed, at the beginning of the State of Israel, a project to electrify the Negev.
I don't know what became of Moscek and Sarah.
Ruchla also had a daughter Ester who became the wife of her cousin Szmul/Max Cherszowski/Maslov.
Ruchla's son Leib Gerszonowicz and his wife Beila Garnek around 1910.
Abraham Bilu, grandson of Ruchla Czalczynski, lived in Israel, near Haifa with his wife Shulamit and their daughter Esther.
To the right of Esther is Rula Flatto, Abraham's sister.
The photo dates from 1952 in Naveh Sha'anan.
II- On the trail
`d'Etla Czalczynski,
a Great Aunt
My grandfather Kasriel, whom I would have loved to have known, had two sisters and two brothers. Only the descendants of Etla, who was five years his senior, survived the Holocaust.
Etla Czalczynski, my father's aunt, lived in Jedrzejow with her husband Mickael Dembowski.
They had four children:
Meir Dembowki (1907-1942) married in 1937 in Wloszczowa.
Magnele-Myriem Dembowski (1911-1978) married Pinkas Zouzowski (1903-1971).
They lived in Krakow and spent the war in Siberia.
and had 5 children,
- two of whom died in infancy,
- then Roman ( 1940-?) married Avital and had 3 children,
- Tsyppi (1943) married Shlomo Bobbe (3 children) and
- Dov-Bnei-Ziv (1946) married to Rachel Schwartz (4 children).
They returned to live in Wrochlaw (Breslau) until 1957, from where they emigrated to Israel.
Leah Dembowski (1915-1987) married Heinrich Pitchenik (1906-1977). They had two children: Fryda Pitchenik, married to Itzack Chalev (3 children), and Myriam Pitchenik, married to Yosef Goren (2 children).
Sara-Hana Dembowski (1913-?)
Hana Dembowski must have disappeared in the turmoil, but Tsipy gave us this photo which keeps her alive a little longer.
Through a series of coincidences, as only life can bring, we found Tsippy and Béni. We were able to talk and learn their story.
Without us knowing that my parents had met them several decades earlier. They had even met Magnele, their mother, and Leah, their aunt.
I don't know when or where this photo was taken, but it was certainly taken by my father:
My mother Suzanne is on the left, to her right Magnele, in profile Tsipy and with her back to us, Leah.
Magnele and her husband.
Tsippy's wedding
Bnei told us what he remembered of his family's history.
His father and mother, who ran a shoe business in Krakow, first fled to the Soviet-occupied zone in 1939.
When the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, they were transported to the Soviet Union on a grueling journey to the city of Rubtsovsk, a city in the Altai Mountains of southwestern Siberia. It lay on the banks of the Aley River, a tributary of the Ob River, in Kazakhstan, 2,867 km east of Moscow. It was served by a railway line, which allowed for industrialization starting in 1941 when tractor and agricultural machinery factories were evacuated from Kharkiv and Odessa. Military equipment was also produced there. It was also a non-ferrous metal mining town. In winter, temperatures easily dropped below -20°C.
Magnele and her husband lived there from 1942 to 1946. They had five children, the first two of whom died of illness in infancy. Roman was born in 1940, Tsippy in 1943, and Bnei in 1946.
He would only experience Siberia for the first six weeks. Bnei knew little of those Siberian years. His parents wanted to forget that ordeal. If I remember correctly, at the end of the war his mother was working in a cooperative and his father was drafted into the Red Army.
Eventually, the small family returned to Poland. In her hometown of Jedrzejow, Magnele found only ruins and desolation, and above all, no one left. Passing through Kielce, they learned of a recent anti-Jewish pogrom. So, she and her husband decided to settle far from that corner of Poland, further west, in the city of Wroclaw (Breslau). A small Jewish community was re-establishing itself there. They lived there until June 1957. Bnei kept a few memories of her Polish childhood. Their life in Poland seemed comfortable. In the summer, they went to the seaside, to Kitana on the Baltic coast, and in the winter, they went skiing at the Zacopane resort.
Many Jewish families lived in Wrocław, and there was also a Jewish club, a kind of community center that organized cultural activities and classes. Bnei learned a little Yiddish there.
At home, they spoke Polish, and his parents spoke to each other in Yiddish. His mother bought matzah for Passover at the local synagogue, and other holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot were celebrated. They lived according to the rules of communist Poland. Bnei has memories of the May Day demonstrations in which his father participated. He would carry him on his shoulders. He was involved in a youth movement, a scouting movement, with all the children in his class. The situation became tense starting in 1956. Bnei was in ninth grade. He witnessed demonstrations in the streets against Jews and against the government. Their building was next to the Communist Party headquarters, and the street events escalated with shouts and roars from the crowd. It was frightening. That same year, while Gomulka was Prime Minister of Poland, Polish Jews were given permission to immigrate to Israel, as far as possible.
Many Jewish families began to leave Poland and the city of Wrocław began to empty of Jewish families.
They left Poland at the end of June 1957, traveling by train in a sleeping car through Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria to the Italian port city of Genoa. In Genoa, they boarded the ship "Aliyah".
The cruise wasn't easy; there was seasickness, then a huge storm while sailing along the coast of Crete. But the most exciting moment was July 1, 1957, after a week at sea: the ship arrived in Haifa. Everyone went up to the upper deck to admire the city and Mount Carmel.
Memories of Poland,
at school, by the sea, and on May 1st
III- In the footsteps of
Kasriel and IZRAeL Czalczynski,
Great-Great Uncle
It all started the day before a trip to New York in February 2006. My parents had just received a letter from Erez Gottlieb of New York, whose great-grandmother was a Czalczynski. He was looking for family connections.
He had retrieved testimonial sheets from Yad Vashel which contained our father's contact information.
So we met him in New Jersey.
He revealed to us the origin of our name, but we were unable to establish any connections at that time.
A few years later, my sister and I visited the Lohamei HaGeta'ot museum near Akko (House of the Ghetto Fighters).
We met Noam, the head of the Archives, and in talking with him, he informed us that one of his friends had the same name as us.
So we got in touch with Shirley "Tchaltchinski".
It turned out that she was the daughter of someone my father had contacted about forty years earlier while browsing the Tel Aviv phone book. They had met but had been unable to establish any connections.
Shirley told me what she knew about the names of her family, who came to Palestine in the 1930s.
And that's where the advances in genealogy come into play.
I sifted through the branches of the Czalczynski collected on JRI-Poland and here is the result.
The first Czalczynski ancestor found, Leyba had two sons, first Jacob and then Icek.
Icek had 4 sons <that I was able to identify:
- Jankiel, my great-great-grandfather,
- Zendel, about whom I don't know much.
But I was able to establish the descendants of
- Kasriel, born in 1825 and
- Israel was born in 1830.
Kasriel Czalczynski, born in 1925, married Hana Birnbaum in 1843 and they had 5 recorded daughters.
° Fajgla Czalczynski (1854-?)
Ester Czalczynski (1860-?) married Sanal Kostemberg in 1881
Sura Czalczynski (1863-?) married Szmul Mlynski in 1883: a son, Izrael Mlynski, was born in 1889.
° Laja Czalczynski (1867- ?)
° Malka Czalczynski (1870-?)
Izrael Czalczynski was born in 1830 and married Hana Gruska (1831-?) and they had 3 recorded children.
* The firstborn was Berek Czalczynski, in 1850 .
The same first name as my great-grandfather, (child of Jankiel, the brother of Izrael).
He married Ruchla Cytron in 1869 and they had 10 children.
1- Alter-Aron (1869-1871)
2- Uryn (1870-?)
3- Moszek (1873- ?)
4-Dawid (1875-1875)
5- Pinkus (1876-?)
6- Alter-Kissel - Katriel Czalczynski (1879-?). He married Dwora Goldstajn in 1903 and they had at least 3 children.
° Berek born in 1902 who married Rachel Mintz and they had at least 3 children (Mottel, Mendel and Sara who married Cylka);
° Fajgla Czalczynski ( 1906-?) married Abraham-David Gotlib (1903-?): they had two listed children:
- Oshra and
- Itzack Gotlib. This is Erez Gotlib's family
Mendel
7- Aitzik Czalczynski (1877-1942) married Pessel Piaskogurska (1880-1942), who died in Majdanek
8- Sara (1891-1942) . Her married name was Rosenwald.
9 - Chaia Czalczynski, wife Borcheit
10- Yechiel-Meir (1887-1960, Bnei-Barach-Israel) is the family of Shirley Tchaltchinski
He married Libele Rappoport and had at least 3 children:
Laon Chalchynski
Perez Chalchinski (after 1900-1966 in Israel)
Jacob-Katriel Chalchinski
Dov Chalchinski
Hella Chalchinski
Itchek Chalchinski
* The second is Ryfka-Ruchla Czalczynski (1860-?) who married Jacob Sucheki in 1876
* Mojze Czalczynski (1873-?) . He lived in Lodz.
As you can see, branches of the Czazlczynski family still live abroad, with whom I have not yet had any contact.
Those who are interested can let me know, so that we can restore life and descendants to our lost families.
Let's work together to gather memories and information
Contact me